Monday, October 12, 2015

Celebrating the Nerd Awards: Macarthur and Nobel Roundup

Heading the list of Macarthur “genius” awards was a
very gratifying choice for the Gruntled household: Ta-Nehesi Coates, the most
thoughtful on the young generation of black public intellectuals.

The biggest "find”: Lin-Manuel Miranda and his
musical "Hamilton," which has become an obsession among my relatives.

In the Nobels, I particular liked the story of
Youyou Tu, who found a way to do science under Maoist anti-intellectual tyranny
by finding cures within the annals of Chinese traditional medicine.

The peace prize lifts up the brightest achievement
of the Arab Spring by honoring the "Tunisian quartet" of civil
society organizations. They are building a functioning civil democracy after
removing a long-running tyranny.

Today rounds out the Nerd Awards with the Nobel Prize in economics to
Angus Deaton, a Scot working at Princeton who studies well-being, one of my
favorite topics.